Researchers: Old School Criminology May Help Nab Cyber Criminals

Researchers have developed a method in which they use old school criminology to bring down cyber criminals.

According to a research being conducted at the University of Maryland, cyber criminals are vulnerable to human failings just like their targets as it is a known fact that the biggest threat to network security is humans.

Michel Cukier, professor of reliability engineering and David Maimon, professor of criminology, are working together to study cyber crime on the lines of criminology and come up with recommendations that would help IT managers and security experts fight cyber crime, PC World reports.

The professors are examining cyber attacks from two perspectives, one of the victim and the other of the attacker. They studied attacks made on the university's network between 2007 and 2009 and concluded that successful cyber attacks were a result of motivated offenders, suitable victims and lack of guardians.

"We believe that criminological insights in the study of cybercrime are important, since they may support the development of concrete security policies that consider not only the technical element of cybercrime but also the human component," Maimon said in a statement.